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The efforts of the White Rose movement to rouse Germans against the Third Reich lasted just months, and key members, like Sophie Scholl, were captured and executed in Munich in 1943. Here, her grave. Go to related article »Credit Nancy Keil

This year, the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, we add one more idea: to use contemporary
reporting in The New York Times itself as a lens for thinking about what the press was reporting at the time and why it was reporting it that way. Through this investigation, students can better understand the answers to some of the broader questions they so frequently ask during any study of the Holocaust: What did Americans
know about the Holocaust while it was going on? And why didn’t the United States do more to end the Holocaust, or at least to rescue its victims? They can also learn about both the power and the limitations
of journalism.

As an alternative, start by having students read an article by Max Frankel, the executive editor of The Times from 1986 to 1994, published prominently in the The Times’s 150th anniversary edition on Nov. 14,
2001.

And then there was failure: none greater than the staggering, staining failure of The New York Times to depict Hitler’s methodical extermination of the Jews of Europe as a horror beyond all other horrors
in World War II — a Nazi war within the war crying out for illumination.

The annihilation of six million Jews would not for many years become distinctively known as the Holocaust. But its essence became knowable fast enough, from ominous Nazi threats and undisputed eyewitness reports
collected by American correspondents, agents and informants. Indeed, a large number of those reports appeared in The Times. But they were mostly buried inside its gray and stolid pages, never featured, analyzed
or rendered truly comprehensible.

Yet what they printed made clear that the editors did not long mistrust the ghastly reports. They presented them as true within months of Hitler’s secret resolve in 1941 to proceed to the ”final solution”
of his fantasized ”Jewish problem.”

Why, then, were the terrifying tales almost hidden in the back pages? Like most — though not all — American media, and most of official Washington, The Times drowned its reports about the fate of Jews
in the flood of wartime news. Its neglect was far from unique and its reach was not then fully national, but as the premier American source of wartime news, it surely influenced the judgment of other news purveyors.

Students should read the entire article. Then, if time allows, they should read some of the original articles that Mr. Frankel discusses, like the one headlined “Extinction Feared by Jews in Poland” (PDF) on page 28 of the March 1, 1942, paper. After the class finishes its investigation, students should discuss the following questions:

How did The Times cover the Holocaust as it was taking place and being learned about by journalists?

A common inaccuracy about the World War II period is that Americans didn’t know about the Holocaust until the concentration camps
were finally liberated at the end of the war in 1945. How does Mr. Frankel’s article, and a review of Times coverage from that period, shed light on this question? What Americans were most likely to know
about the Holocaust taking place in Europe? What Americans were less likely to know about it? (You can read the first chapter of Peter Novick’s book, “The Holocaust in American Life,” to
learn more about this topic.)

How do you think Americans’ reaction to the Holocaust before the end of World War II might have been different if The New York Times and other highly regarded newspapers and magazines had featured news about
the Holocaust in their major front-page headlines?

In what ways do you think the American press in general, or The Times in particular, has changed since the 1930s and ’40s? What evidence can you give to back up your opinion?

Mr. Frankel concludes his article with this statement:

And to this day the failure of America’s media to fasten upon Hitler’s mad atrocities stirs the conscience of succeeding generations of reporters and editors. It has made them acutely alert
to ethnic barbarities in far-off places like Uganda, Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo. It leaves them obviously resolved that in the face of genocide, journalism shall not have failed in vain.

Do you agree with this conclusion? Do you think The Times and other media outlets are aggressively covering current human rights tragedies unfolding around the world? How do you think the decline of print newspapers
and the nightly national news broadcasts, along with the rise of digital media and 24-hour news channels, might affect current and future coverage?

Going Further | If students want to study the topic of Holocaust coverage in The Times in greater depth, they can read the following two pieces:

An essay by Laurel Leff, the author of “Buried by The Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper,” in which she excoriates The Times
for its Holocaust coverage;

The Times’s book review of “Buried by The Times,” written by Robert Leiter, in which he criticizes Ms. Leff’s
book as a “high-minded crusade against one newspaper.”

Then, students can use these two sources to contribute additional insights to the above discussion questions.

A much lesser-known, but just as staggering, stain on the Times’ reputation: the complicity of Walter Duranty (a Pulitzer Prize winner!) in covering up the Holodomor, the Stalin-engineered Ukrainian famine://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty

I just would like to point out an error. You are talking about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 not the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. The first one ended the killing of some 300 thousands Jews of Warsaw (mostly) by
Germans, the second – ended in killing of some 150 thousands of the remaining population and leveled the city.

With Regards,

Wieslawa Niziol

Thank you for catching that, Mr. Niziol. I’ve clarified it in the piece. (You were referring, I believe, to our second reference in which we wrote about the 70th anniversary and inadvertently left out the word “ghetto,” right? I’ve added it.)

Thank you for this article. I direct the Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE), which takes graduate students in four fields (journalism, law, medicine, and religion) to Germany and
Poland where they learn about the actions of those in their profession during the Holocaust and then use that history as a launching point for an intensive course of study in contemporary professional ethics.
Each year our program looks at the material you mention and connects it to contemporary concerns for journalists today. Thank you.

I would be happy to make available an interview I did with Mrs Jan Gilewicz, a survivor of the concentration camps. She met her husband ‘behind the wire’, married him and came to Australia. Here they
set up a new life only for it to be ended in tragedy much later when their son was shot and killed by Tasmanian police. I have documented the case(as a retired journalist) with interviews for posterity. Interestingly
Mrs Gilewicz and her husband had a compact NEVER to discuss their incarceration in their new home as ‘people would not believe it’. Also the trade unions here that controlled industry seemed averse
to any criticism by survivors of the war of their experiences. Additionally an interview with a Stanislau Hanuszewicz who says he was born in a concentration camp may be of interest to students. His mother died
soon after arrival, children taken from the father, Australia must not have been as welcoming as ‘our’ media made it out to be to Holocaust refugees. Both interviews can be sent should educators
feel they may have merit.

Before we flail ourselves too hard over this neglect of white middle-class populations to whom we can relate so well–I’m a child of the Holocaust on both sides of the family–let’s look
in the mirror. Holocausts are a fact of life on the other side of the world; so are rape and mutilation and abuse. We read about such events and shake our heads; a few religious people go over to try to
help, risking their lives, and a few others send money to soothe their consciences. I admit to being part of the latter group. Even with true-to-life video documentation, the outcry is not loud enough to
stifle the atrocities, which go on and on and on and on. As a cultural Jew, I weep on the appointed memorial days and over the remnants of the lives of family members who died at Auschwitz. Why don’t
any of us do more? Do we feel that safe? There would be more of us out on the streets if our bank accounts were skimmed by the government as they were in Cyprus. That I promise you.

Today’s reporting on the Middle East by the NY Times could be used as a similar example. The Times consistently prints inaccurate anti-Israel articles and opinion pieces, ignores or misstates the policy and
goals of anti-Israel parties and people, and describes radical anti-Western and anti-semitic organizations as “moderate”.

Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, and other organizations state clearly that their goal is the elimination of the world’s only Jewish state. This can only happen if the 6 million Jews living in that nation
are murdered or expelled.

Hamas and other organizations clearly state that their goal is the genocide of the entire Jewish people (the P.A. ‘only’ wants to murder or expel those Jews who live in Israel). None of this is
stated in laudatory articles about ‘moderate’ Hamas or Muslim Brotherhood leaders, or in opinion pieces excoriating Israel for not taking actions which would allow or hasten its own destruction.

I find it interesting that these articles appear more than sixty years after the events. I find it ironic that they appear during a time when American journalism is failing another persecuted group of people: Muslim
communities in America and throughout the world. In fact, our media chose to give precedence to the loud, violent Muslims who use Islam as a rationalization for their political agendas.

Ever since 9/11 American media have failed to give voice to the American Muslim leaders and organizations who immediately condemned the attacks and continue to condemn ongoing violent acts by extremists.

Worse, our media failed to educate us about Islam, focusing instead upon the violence of a small percentage of Muslims, a practice that also spread fear and hatred of Muslims.

I know I will be criticized for implying a comparison of the Holocaust with the current level of anti-Muslim prejudice. Although I also know that vilifying the Other was one of the first steps to the Camps,
that is not my point. My point is the consistent failure of our media to provide us with information that will help us to live with one another instead of a steady stream of celebrity sound bytes and mindless
chat fests.

Will we have to wait six more decades for another journalistic mea culpa?

Naylor brings up an issue we have miserably failed to address, much in keeping with our failure to address the HolocaustMr – the despicable bigotry and attacks on Muslims and Islam. We talk about religious
tolerance and then debase this religion and its faithful, in full American hypocrisy. This not only confirms our disregard for other nations and cultures but it also spurs domestic Muslims to lash out in rage
and attempt domestic acts of violence at home.

But let us not pass over the Evian Conference that took place early in the war, whereby the USA and other western countries refused to take in thousands of Jewish children and allowed them to be turned back and
killed in concentration camps. How cravenly despicable, un-American, un-Christian and unforgivable was that. Shame forever on us, Australia, even Canada, and all but one of the western hemisphere countries.
Was this ever reported, during or since the war? The Germans face up to and study their Nazi past so that it will be less likely to occur again, but we slink off and bury our worst deeds in revisionist history
and flag waving patriotism. Deplorable.

Mr. Naylor states that he “will be criticized for implying a comparison of the Holocaust with the current level of anti-Muslim prejudice.” As well he should be. The idea that Muslims are in a state
of danger comparable to that faced by European Jewry in the 1930s is ludicrous. Moreover, it’s not primarily the job of the news media to “educate” us about Islam. When a story is news,
it should be reported. When a bomb goes off – no matter who planted it – that’s news. And yet it seems to me the Times – a paper intimately associated with German Jews – has
done a much better job of reporting anti-Muslim incidents than it did in addressing the largest genocide in human history. If people want to flagellate themselves over the supposedly ghastly treatment of Muslims
in the US, fine, but I question their knowledge of the religion and its political manifestations and ambitions. In short, there’s plenty of irony here to go around.

The Times through accepting and publishing accounts of its own mistakes in coverage of the Holocaust, deepens its integrity and enhances its credibility as an organization with a commitment to uncovering and presenting
truths that are important to our collective human experience. The willingness to acknowledge falibility is an important element of an inquiry into the truth.

There is no way of considering ‘The Times’ shameful conduct in undercovering the Holocaust (Shoah) without examining its overall policy to the Jewish situation and today especially to the Jewish state.
The ‘Times’ has consistently done disservice to the Jewish people and today to Israel. During the ‘Holocaust’ it undercovered Israel and now it does the opposite. It undercovers
horrors all over the world while endlessly criticizing Israel and in fact distorting the truth about Israel’s enemies. The ‘conscience’ of the ‘Times’ should be working
on its present policies towards Israel and not just on its moral failures of the past.

This is great. Another interesting question to study would be how media coverage of more recent wars impacted public opinion (or failed to do so). We all know how important images from Vietnam were to turning public
opinion against that debacle. What our invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan?

If more Americans knew the impact would they be as supportive of the policies? Do we lack empathy for Taliban victims in the way way that we couldn’t see the whole picture of what was happening to Jews?

And of course we can reflect on the role of the Times in the run-up to the Iraq invasion. What might the political environment have been like had the claims of the Pentagon and White House been properly investigated
by journalists?

How can we learn from our past to ensure we don’t turn a blind eye to potential future holocausts within our outside the U.S.?